243 Driving More Qualified Home Buyer Traffic - Erin Yarbrough Nov 13 2024

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello, everybody, and welcome to today's episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.

Greg Bray: And we are excited today to have joining us, Erin Yarbrough. Erin is the Director of Marketing at Ideal Homes. Welcome, Erin. Thanks for being with us.

Erin Yarbrough: Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Greg Bray: Well, Erin, for those who haven't had a chance to meet you yet, give us that quick introduction and a little bit of background about yourself.

Erin Yarbrough: Sure. So, married, two kiddos, picket fence. No, I'm just kidding. I actually joined home building in [00:01:00] 2020 in the crazy times. It was an interesting time to join home building. I came from higher education, so it was a complete shift in a career trajectory, but I was really excited to kind of get out of the crisis communications that came with higher education. Got into home building and it's just been such a joy the last four years, even the ups and downs in the market have been really exciting.

So, I feel like you know, you're in a good industry and you know you're in a good career, a good place when even the difficult times are fun. So, that's been really, really fun. As a home builder, Ideal Homes and Neighborhoods, we build across Oklahoma. My husband and I built two Ideal Homes before I ever joined the company. That was kind of what drew me to this company in particular when I was looking to get out of higher education. It's been wonderful.

Kevin Weitzel: So, wait a second. Number one, I want to get into this whole education thing because there's some things we can unpack there that actually directly correlate [00:02:00] to sales. But you're going to stand there and tell me that you bought not one, but two homes from the very person that you work for right now, the very company that you work for right now.

Erin Yarbrough: Oh, yeah, absolutely. We're a true, move-up by our customer. We bought our very first home with Ideal Homes and Neighborhoods and then moved up. A typical Ideal Home move-up buyer, go up to the next neighborhood and to the next product line. Whenever I saw this job come open, I was like, well, I love the company already. I had such a great experience building with them. And it's really fun because the people that helped us build our houses, I get to work with now. So, we built for the first time in 2009, so it's been a minute.

Kevin Weitzel: So, the company motto isn't buy a house from us and you can get a job.

Erin Yarbrough: Right. Exactly. I mean, I'm probably not the only one.

Kevin Weitzel: I gotcha. Hey, so before we get started into a little bit more of a deep dive into your journey in the home building industry and a little bit more about what you guys do at Ideal Homes and some of the differentiating factors, could you please tell our listeners [00:03:00] something interesting about yourself that has nothing to do with family, work, or the home building industry?

Erin Yarbrough: Okay. I have many weird things I could tell you about myself. Let's go with the morbid one. I think that nobody else thinks this is as funny as I do, but when it's my time to go, when it's my time to die and God says like, it's time, Erin, like, I don't want to go early, but when it's my time to go, I don't want to die peacefully in my sleep with my family all by my side. I want to be eaten by a shark because wouldn't that be the best story? Like the best gift I could give my family after I die is like a really good story. Right. So, I just think that that would be the best story for my kids to be like, yeah, my mom, you know, got eaten by a shark.

Kevin Weitzel: If you only knew how giving that is think about the story that your family gets to tell but think about that shark family. That shark's gonna get to go home and go like, oh my goodness, this sooner that I just chowed down was so delicious.

Erin Yarbrough: Yeah. I mean, I feel like it's very selfless, right? I'm [00:04:00] being very selfless in this.

Kevin Weitzel: You're giving back. It's the circle of life.

Erin Yarbrough: That's right.

Greg Bray: I can see the family reunions. Yeah, Mom, she went out doing what she loved, being eaten by a shark.

Erin Yarbrough: That's right. My team. Oh yeah. Our director got eaten by a shark.

Greg Bray: Now, how many shark attacks do you have in Oklahoma these days?

Erin Yarbrough: Well, you know, we're surrounded by so many oceans.

Kevin Weitzel: Wait a second now, Greg, you just tapped into something here. Just like Arizona, there's no beachfront property in Oklahoma. So, you're literally gonna have to travel somewhere, like on vacation or a work trip to be eaten by a shark?

Erin Yarbrough: We love to go to Texas to go to the beaches with our family down there and our family loves to fish. So, my brother-in-law, niece and nephew, they fish all the time. They catch, I mean, they're only like, you know, two feet long, but they catch sharks right next to us in the ocean all the time. I feel like there's a good chance there at some point this is going to happen.

Kevin Weitzel: Before we jump into some of the digital marketing stuff, can I [00:05:00] ask you a question? Because you did say something interesting, and this is me being less silly now. Uh, you did say something about higher education and that, you know, you came from that industry. Do you find that that allows you to see things from a different perspective?

Because not only do you have the perspective of a home buyer that built with that company, but you also have the perspective of being an educator and understanding that sometimes we use jargon in our industry, you know, like HERS index. A home buyer doesn't know what HERS index means. Does that give you any leg up on some of the other people doing your same role?

Erin Yarbrough: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I feel like there are a lot of similarities randomly. When you decide what university you're going to go to after high school, it's not usually the student that's making that in a vacuum, right? Like, their parents are involved, their families are involved, very much like home buying. Like, it's not just one person making a decision many times. It's often a lot of people. And so, the content that has to be created around that to not only win over an 18-year-old kid in high school [00:06:00] or a 26-year-old first-time home buyer, a 30-year-old first-time home buyer, it's their families a lot of times as well.

It's things like you said, the jargon, right? So, at the university, we didn't want to say the word dorm. It has a negative connotation. We do that here where we don't want to say lot. We don't want to use the word lot, so we use the word homesite. But people don't search for homesite whenever they're searching for something on Google. Just like somebody doesn't search the word residential college or residence hall when they're searching for dorms, they search for dorms.

So, there are a lot of those very similar things like you talked about trying to make sure that not only are we using the terms that we want to use for as marketers, but also that we're using the terms for SEO, even though they're not necessarily ones that have the best connotation to them. So, trying to find a mix of those is sometimes interesting.

Greg Bray: That's some great thoughts. I want to go back to the SEO question here in a minute. But before we do that, tell us a little bit about Ideal Homes, a little more from the audience that you're serving. Because you've [00:07:00] implied some different demographics that you're going after, both move up and first time. And so, tell us a little bit more about how that plays out for you guys.

Erin Yarbrough: Sure. Absolutely. So, we build across Oklahoma. We've about 20 communities. Within those communities, we have three different series of floor plans. Those different series definitely affect different home buyers. So, I'll be honest with you. We do not use the term series with our customers. We don't talk about series. It just gets confusing about what a series is and because they overlap in square footage sometimes. It's just really confusing.

So, we really define everything by the neighborhood. So, this community has these specific floor plans. But within our different series, we can, you know, attract different homebuyers, but sometimes it's the same across these series as well. So, about a third of our homebuyers are first-time homebuyers. In Oklahoma, we have really reasonable home prices, which, you know, customers may not always feel that way, but when you compare us to the rest of the country, it looks a pretty good, [00:08:00] right?

Kevin Weitzel: Fact.

Erin Yarbrough: Yes, exactly. So, it's a lot easier for a first-time home buyer to buy a home in Oklahoma than it is in California. Move-up buyers are second largest group. So, a lot of times people will come in, maybe buying one of our smaller homes, and then move up to our larger series, which is considered our signature series.

There are a lot of different options. Oklahoma City, which a majority of our communities are surrounding Oklahoma City Metro. Oklahoma City is one of the top 10 cities in the country for people moving into the city, which is very interesting. It's really kind of what you would see, I would say like a Boise or an Austin, maybe 10, 15 years ago for Austin, Boise, a little bit sooner. But really kind of growing in a way that is seeing a lot more people moving into the state than previously. So, we're seeing a lot of people, not only first-time home buyers and move-up buyers, but also just moving in life changes.

Kevin Weitzel: When you're saying moving in the city, are you saying more centrally or more [00:09:00] concentrated in the actual municipality versus a lot of areas? Like we call everything in Arizona, Phoenix, long story short, versus moving out to the suburbs. So, you're saying it's more of a dense acquisition of home buyers.

Erin Yarbrough: So, yes, and no. What's interesting is, yes, they are moving into Oklahoma City proper. But Oklahoma City is one of the largest cities by landmass. And so, we actually have communities that are technically in Oklahoma City, but they go to, you know, a different school system, for example. That's pretty common everywhere, but because Oklahoma City is so large from a landmass perspective, it means that we have more kind of communities and areas within Oklahoma City itself.

Kevin Weitzel: Gotcha.

Greg Bray: So, Erin, you were talking a minute ago about terminology and the difference between connotations, the way that people think of the product or the descriptions and the things they search on versus what you would like to use. Let's dive into that a little bit deeper. What are some of the ways you've found balance between like lot versus home site and some of [00:10:00] those types of terms?

Erin Yarbrough: That's a great question and again, kind of goes back to my roots in higher education. Really where I find the most opportunity to use something like a lot is in articles or things like that, that aren't necessarily our bread and butter of our website, with homesite plot maps and things like that. So, really trying to get people into the site from a search term from SEO doesn't necessarily have to be how we use it everywhere else on the website. So, really using that as an SEO term more than anything else and articles is a great place to do that.

Greg Bray: So, you're talking about the things you're putting out on your blog or kind of on the side that are educational and also designed for Google to chew on a little bit.

Erin Yarbrough: Yes, exactly. Yep, which is weird because we have a list of words that we like to use, like homesite, for example. And so, then whenever we're writing our content, a lot of times it's, you know, just going in and switching it, knowing that it would be nice to get some other verbiage in there.

Greg Bray: Are there any [00:11:00] other good examples beyond the word lot that you guys focus on?

Erin Yarbrough: So, we sometimes use the word floor design instead of floor plan. That's another one of those. We like to use community instead of neighborhood sometimes. But again, those aren't necessarily things that people search for.

Kevin Weitzel: Do you guys ever use the term winder instead of window?

Erin Yarbrough: No.

Kevin Weitzel: Wrong part of the country.

Erin Yarbrough: I don't think that's an Oklahoma thing.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh, okay.

Greg Bray: Well, Erin, you've been with the company for, you said, about four years now. As you have come in and been learning the industry and evolving, what are some of the changes that you've seen just in your tenure there at Ideal Homes from a marketing perspective?

Erin Yarbrough: Actually, when I was in higher education previously, part of my job was to manage a small web development team. One of the things that I've seen since I've joined is really this idea less of like, oh, we need a new website. We need to launch this whole thing across the entire website. We need to rebrand everything. [00:12:00] It's this idea of iteration and agility and making small changes consistently instead of waiting to build up for one massive change that needs to be created for our user experience. So, that's one thing that I've seen from a marketing perspective, specifically to digital technologies.

And then, in marketing in general, I think one of the things that's been really fun to see over the last four years, especially as the entire world has gone through the pandemic is just how things have changed from really branding heavy to really during the pandemic I feel like it was very much focused on tasks of buy this product, make this thing and then we're kind of a little bit more back to branding again. So, I feel like there's been a shift in marketing since the pandemic about how we market ourselves. That's been really fun to watch.

Especially in the housing industry, where just like everyone else, we were selling houses before they had sticks up in the ground, you know, we had slabs down and that was [00:13:00] it. So, marketing changes as we have photography, all of a sudden. Four years ago, when I started, we didn't have homes that were completed, so we couldn't even take photos of anything. Photos are probably the biggest driver in our marketing efforts now, and video. Whereas then we were scrambling to get content and now we have a plethora of content.

Kevin Weitzel: So, you mean to tell me that four years ago, people would just be driving by a worksite and see some stems sticking up out of a foundation and be like, I'll take that one?

Erin Yarbrough: Heck yeah. Yeah. They'd see a slab and they're like, Oh, I see a house going up, sign me up. The shortages and all that stuff it would be funny how many times design selections would have to change throughout the course of a home being built because we couldn't get anything. So, it was crazy times for sure.

Greg Bray: So, Erin, without throwing anybody in your leadership team under the bus, have you had to change your approach for getting budget and resources over that time when it was so [00:14:00] easy to sell and now maybe you have to work a little bit harder to get that message out there and maybe invest a little bit more in that lead generation? Do you have good support? Do you have to fight a little bit harder to get the budget you want? How has that evolved?

Erin Yarbrough: I feel like it would be a much better story if I like really had to struggle and was able to convince everybody of a certain budget that I needed, but I'm very, very lucky in where I am. Our company president is Steve Shoemaker. He was over marketing before I was, and then our CEO, Vernon McKown, he is very much sales and marketing heavy. So, they've been very supportive, and my current vice president is over sales and marketing now. And so, the struggles that I've had in getting budget haven't really been as dire as what I hear about from some other companies. So, I'm sorry. That's not as exciting of a story.

But I will say, because of that, it has opened up a lot of opportunities for us. So, we've had the same percentage of a budget during the pandemic, after the pandemic. We [00:15:00] haven't really changed that percentage. I will say that during the pandemic when I wasn't spending as much on photography and those kinds of things, I was spending a lot more time and effort on R and D.

The exciting thing during that time was that I was getting to try different things. Which I was brand new to the industry, so that was kind of fun, too. We don't have as much for an R and D budget now. But I think that'll start waning as the market tides turn in the future, being able to balance that a little bit more.

Greg Bray: Can you give us an example of where you are spending R and D money? What do you consider R and D to be from a marketing perspective?

Erin Yarbrough: So, I really enjoy data, data analytics, things like that. And one of the things we tried to implement during the pandemic was a machine learning algorithm that would serve up content or homes that the customer might like based on their search history, comparing it to others in the industry. We didn't find that it was really moving the needle all that much [00:16:00] on leads or appointments or anything like that, but it was a really good test for us to see where our hiccups are in connecting data points together using APIs, things like that, to connect all of our processes and back end systems together.

And so, that is something from an R and D standpoint that was really fun for us to go through. It also kind of opened my eyes on the machine learning opportunities that there are a lot of systems and services out there that use machine learning and use it really well, but if there's not a closing the loop on the data piece, then I'm not necessarily sure that we're really getting true accurate recommendations.

Because if we can't see that Erin Yarbrough has all these similarities to a previous customer, so we're going to serve her these. But if we can't see that Erin Yarbrough actually bought this house, then are we really closing the loop on the data? So, [00:17:00] I might be going off on a tangent here, but I just think it's really interesting from an AI standpoint of what we can really use AI for and where it's maybe not there yet.

Kevin Weitzel: I think what AI validates, especially when you're talking about data aggregation, is that we all think that we're unique. Just like our home plans are unique. No, it's a rectangle with dividing walls. But what AI will point out, especially with the data aggregation sign is that as unique as we feel that we are, we in certain aspects of our life channel into certain lanes, based on income, based on education, based on life experience, even the brands of cars will buy.

You know, people that check box A, B, C, D, and E are more likely to buy a Tesla, F through Z, they're more likely to buy a Honda, whatever. I'm just randomly naming car brands, but you get the gist. So yeah, I mean, I think you can validate a little bit more. Now, did you find that you could eliminate some of the things you have? Like maybe you have a plan that Is a little tired on maybe not selling that well, but now that you've had this [00:18:00] aggregation of the data, you can see that nobody's even searching for a one-bedroom, five-bathroom house. Why do we have this in our plan library?

Erin Yarbrough: Yeah, that's a great question. So, I actually did a data analysis maybe six months ago and took the data of our spec homes, which we call field homes, again another thing that, you know, we like to call differently. So, we took our spec homes, and I looked at the days on market for each floor plan and each elevation to see where our trouble spots were. So, that I feel like, is more of an opportunity for us to gather some data and I think that could turn into something using machine learning to do that. We have a small enough data set on that kind of thing that I feel like I can just do that myself.

But that's the kind of thing I really enjoy doing is really taking the data to figure out what is not only being searched on, but then what is ultimately being bought. So, maybe a floor plan doesn't necessarily show [00:19:00] well on photos and videos, or maybe we just didn't have great selections, but maybe when they see it in person, that's what ends up being purchased. So, I think it's a combination of those things, right? The Google Analytics data of what web pages are actually being searched and used and visited, and then the other side, what's being actually sold.

Greg Bray: I love the fact, Erin, that you are tying everything back to the sale, all your evaluations. You're doing tests. Does it drive sales? It doesn't matter if it drives traffic. It doesn't matter if it makes things prettier or whatever. Is it driving sales? Is it moving the most important metric of all? Do you have any intermediate metrics that you look at as well that, even if it's not quite getting to the sale, that would still help you say this is helping or not helping?

Erin Yarbrough: Yeah, we do a really good job, I think at Ideal Homes and Neighborhoods, of taking the data and tracking every piece of the funnel. So, yes, website traffic is important, and I would say, from a traditional marketing standpoint, that's really what we're looking at, [00:20:00] to turn that into a lead. And so, if we have great website traffic and our leads haven't gone up, then where are we spending too much money? Like, are we spending too much money in an ad that's underperforming? Or is it just the market conditions? What are we doing? And that's where national data really comes into play for us too. And so, lead is one of our biggest metrics. How many leads are we getting from a kind of traditional marketing standpoint? And then really, how are we turning those into appointments?

So, our charge as a marketing department at Ideal Homes and Neighborhoods is to drive qualified traffic to the model homes. My job isn't to just get a whole bunch of website traffic, because I can spend a lot of money and get kind of junk traffic, but really are we driving qualified traffic?

And then, our sales team is held to an extremely high standard on their conversion from appointment to sale. So, if I don't do our job of getting the appropriate leads out there and the appropriate type of people to those appointments, then they [00:21:00] can't do their job and live up to their expectations. So, I feel like a lot of weight is on our shoulders, self-imposed, not like somebody else did that. I'd rather have fewer leads that are higher quality than a crazy amount of leads that aren't producing. And so, tracking all of those parts of the funnel is really critical for us.

Kevin Weitzel: As part of your funnel, are you, uh, and this is going to be a confusing term for someone from Oklahoma, OS, not you, but C, uh, do you guys have OSCs as part of your team? And if so, do you have a team of them? Do you have one? How are you working that angle?

Erin Yarbrough: Great question. So, right now we have one OSC. She's been in the industry for 20 years, so she kind of knows what she's doing. I'm going to make somebody else mad, but she's the best OSC in the country.

Kevin Weitzel: In the country?

Erin Yarbrough: Oh yeah. Hands down.

Kevin Weitzel: Not just the state of Oklahoma, not in the Tulsa or Oklahoma City region, in the country?

Erin Yarbrough: Hands down. Heck yeah. National award winner, you know, all the things.

Kevin Weitzel: There you go.

Erin Yarbrough: So, yeah. So, in our marketing team, it's actually a pretty [00:22:00] small team, which everybody our size has a pretty small team, but it's myself, we have a marketing coordinator who does all of our MLS listings, all of our website management, things like that. We have a creative manager, and so she's managing all of our photography, video, social media, things like that. And then, we have our online sales counselor. So, she's part of the marketing team, but we report all ups to the marketing and sales vice presidents. So, our sales and marketing teams are very tight-knit, very close. We work very well together. I hear horror stories from other companies and I feel terrible for them because I know that we're very lucky in that.

Greg Bray: Kevin, we're going to have to find a way to let people listening who want to challenge the best OSC in the country statement, some way for them to submit an application.

Kevin Weitzel: And are doing this like gladiator style or is it, you know, like with chain mail and swords or is this gonna, you know, and phone lines? You know, who can handle three phone lines at one time, you know.

Greg Bray: Yeah. Special event at IBS next year. Right. We're going to have a throw [00:23:00] down.

Kevin Weitzel: Or possibly The Nationals. I don't know.

Erin Yarbrough: Well, gladly. We'll take them on a hundred percent. Throwdown. She can handle it for sure.

Greg Bray: Well, Erin, you mentioned having a small team. How do you decide where that line is for you of what do we want to have in-house on the team versus partnering with an agency or some other type of outside support?

Erin Yarbrough: That's a really good question. I think that my barometer for taking on projects internally versus outsourcing them, and we do outsource quite a bit is, is this a one-time project that we can put a lot of effort into, and our marketing team is just incredible, that our marketing team can put all the effort into and make it happen and then it's kind of done? Or is there ongoing maintenance and support that has to happen in this project?

So, if it's ongoing support, you know, it's not something that I feel like we can add to what our team already manages. Our marketing coordinator also manages model homes. There's just a [00:24:00] lot of things on our plates. That's typically whenever we're going to outsource it. If it's something that I feel like we can get it done, get it done quickly, and it's not going to take up ongoing effort, I feel like that's whenever we can manage it in-house.

Greg Bray: As you have come into this industry for just a few years, as Kevin mentioned before, having a different perspective, what's the one thing that you just want to shout from the rooftops at the other home building marketers and say, people, knock it off, stop doing this?

Erin Yarbrough: Yeah, I think that maybe not for all marketers, because I feel like there are some incredible marketers out there, way better than I am. But I would say for either people that are in companies that are growing significantly or that are in new positions, I wish somebody had said to me this, which actually my boss did, so I can't say I wish.

It's okay to not hit a home run your first time out of the gate. I went into this company and this position wanting to do all the things, doing them all quickly. Since talking [00:25:00] to some of my peers that are starting in this industry fresh, they're having the same idea. And so, it's really just tackling things small, in iteration. You don't have to go out of the gate and accomplish 50 things all at one time. How do you iterate? How do you make sure you have priorities and really focusing on driving qualified traffic to the model homes? If it's not going to accomplish that easily and quickly and you can't track it, save it for later. The key has to be prioritizing what drives that traffic.

Greg Bray: Kevin, that sounds like a drop-the-mic moment right there.

Kevin Weitzel: It's pretty good. It was pretty good.

Greg Bray: Erin, if somebody wants to reach out and connect with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Erin Yarbrough: LinkedIn and email are great. I'd be happy to share my email address. You can follow me on social media, but unless you want tips on like how to get the best wagon for your soccer mom Saturdays, you know, there's not a lot of home building content on there. So, I would be happy to chat via those two platforms.

Greg Bray: Well, thanks again, Erin, for sharing so freely with us today. We appreciate your time. [00:26:00] And thank you everybody for listening to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you.